Show HN: I built a math website the internet loved, I'm back with more features

[viveknathani_]

A few months back, I published my website, teachyourselfmath, which shows you a list of math problems parsed automatically from PDFs around the world. It received a tremendous amount of feedback and interest. And I was honestly overwhelmed by the response and then life happened.

Over the past few weeks, I have been actively working on this project, trying to incorporate all the feedback and I’d love to share it with the world again. New features: 1. Filter problems by difficulty and category 2. Bookmark your favorite problems 3. Editor in the comment section supports markdown formatting 4. ...and some UI improvements throughout the website

I am also starting a small telegram community of math nerds who would like to discuss all things math, as well as talk about upcoming features and feedback for the website. Here is the link - (https://t.me/teachyourselfmath)

If you’d like to support my work through small donations, you can do it here - (https://www.buymeacoffee.com/viveknathani). Right now, teachyourselfmath runs for free. Later, I’d love to make features that people would love to pay for but fundamentally, the goal is to make math accessible through technology. There’s a lot of peer learning involved in the comments section of these math problems. All of this gives me more reason to keep working on this.

Happy hacking!

[franciscop]

Are you interested in using https://vector-graph.com/ to add math diagrams? I created it exactly for this kind of websites and I'd be happy to waiver the fee for your site!

[dimava]

Also consider https://cortexjs.io/mathlive/ in case you need LaTeX WYSIWYG ordinary people can understand

[breadsniffer01]

I’m building a STEM tutor (https://withmarble.io). Right now it works for programming, but next is Math. I’ll test out your library and if it suits, I’ll buy a license. Thanks for sharing!

[nutanc]

This looks really cool. Possible to connect with you to see how we can also use this for https://books.innings2.com/demo.

This is a free website for math content from grade 6-10th. This fits with our design philosophy. Want to see if we can make something interactive with vector-graph

[viveknathani_]

wow! this seems amazing. let me chalk out the roadmap for this site and reach out to you accordingly. thank you for your interest!

[lern_too_spel]

There's also Asymptote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asymptote_%28vector_graphics_l...

[namanyayg]

so beautiful :) how much time did it take to build?

[HFguy]

This is good work. Are there examples of sites that have used your library? There weren't any links on your website.

[two_handfuls]

Oh that looks cool! I have a static page with some math content, could use this!

[iamwil]

Are the diagrams interactive?

[shoaki]

To stay in touch with math, the annually publicized math problems from the German Abitur[0] are great! The problems are already separated into three difficulties, making it suitable to include in your website (although they might need translating).

[0] https://www.iqb.hu-berlin.de/abitur/pools2023/mathematik/erh...

[viveknathani_]

this seems very interesting! thanks, i will check it out!

[antinone]

cool.

highly recommend to implement the review exercise style of https://www.executeprogram.com/!, both the UI, albeit with better theming (https://monkeytype.com/), and the spaced repition feature, all while keeping the hn styled comment section, although i'd let none-related comments run horizontally to click through different approaches/explanation(-styles).

you got a startup there. keep it affordable. 5 bucks a month after u get a propper UI and spaced repetition with different numbers integrated.

great, simple, idea! let the copycat-wars begin :D

[viveknathani_]

hahaha thanks! it is easy to put up a paywall but like you rightly pointed out, i'd love to make something worth paying for. until then, i don't know what direction this project will be taking. i'll keep iterating.

thanks for writing in!

[ilikegreen]

I remember when you first posted this and it is a project I think upon very frequently! It's nice to see you have made further progress — and that there are comments with attempts at solving! Great job.

I still find some problems with the navigation of the problems, but I am not even sure where to go to fix that. It has to do with the difficulty of each problem, but also with how large each topic is: algebra encompasses both linear algebra and linear equation solving, which is a very wide bracket.

But you're making progress. That's great! Congratulations on that, and I'll be sure to keep visiting the website.

[viveknathani_]

this comment has my heart, thank you!

i understand that the difficulty metric right now does not do justice to the problem's representation - i will come up with a better solution for this.

on the point of topic granularity - i understand that it feels vague right now but i also wonder what the depth should be. i will do some research on how to solve this better.

lastly, if you are interested, there's also a small community i am making around this - https://t.me/teachyourselfmath

thank you for all the feedback!

[n4r9]

Nice work. Out of curiosity, how is the difficulty determined? I notice that some of the "hard" questions (inverting a 2x2 matrices or differentiating common functions) are much easier than others (proving that no natural number has Euler totient equal to 14).

[ktallett]

IMO, I think in the grand scheme of things proofs are always tricky so it generally would be in a higher difficulty no matter the problem. However in the category of number theory, that would be say an easier proof than some others.

[viveknathani_]

hi! right now, it is manually assigned after parsing the problems. i am figuring out a relative system for assigning difficulty automatically.

[Ciantic]

Looks good, one quick thing: Maybe hide the comments behind a button? Now they are giving away the answer, as some have already posted it there in the first comments.

[viveknathani_]

valid feedback. thanks, will add this!

[Brosper]

Hmm what about the UX/UI. I don't feel it

[eappleby]

I love it! I also built a math focused website. Schools can use it to host Math-A-Thons, which is a type of fundraiser where students answer math problems online and solicit donations to support their school. I made all the math problems available to play for free outside of the platform, as well as guides that help the students answer the problems:

https://www.forourschool.org/math-games https://www.forourschool.org/math-guides

Yay Math!!

[mrkramer]

I like the HN like design. Great web app.

[viveknathani_]

hi, glad you liked it! thank you!

[mgd]

As someone who has struggled with learning maths, this looks really great. I've set up an account and look forward to giving it a try

And yes, the Hacker News minimal style of the website is very much appreciated! well done

[viveknathani_]

glad you liked it! you can also check out the telegram community i am building - https://t.me/teachyourselfmath

[internetter]

Previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39113879 (92 Comments)

[who-shot-jr]

This looks fantastic, getting better at maths is something I have always wanted to do.

Also, some of the commenters have posted python code but it is not formatted/styled.

[viveknathani_]

hi! glad you like the site.

i have introduced a markdown editor in this release. that should fix the code formatting issues going forward.

thanks!

[koshergweilo]

Small nitpick, instead of having a "back to home" button on the left, maybe just make the logo in the navbar a link to the homepage.

[mojomark]

Cool, but all I see are comments and attempts at solutions. Are the actual correct solutions available somewhere in the app that I'm not seeing?

[king_magic]

I love this. Great job. Bought you some coffee.

[viveknathani_]

hi, thank you so much, means a lot to me :))))

[mattl]

The font size is a little small on mobile and the layout breaks if you increase it.

[DeathArrow]

Maybe you can mention it on r/learnmath? A lot of people would be interested.

[viveknathani_]

i posted here previously - https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmath/comments/19e8awk/i_wished...

[lajisam]

This is awesome!

[viveknathani_]

thank you :)

[robbiejs]

Hey OP,

Love the headline. Very confident ;-)